Hi everybody. I did my dissertation about this kind of exocentric verb-noun compound last year. Some linguists call them 'scarecrow compounds' because that's a popular example. They come from French and were mildly productive for a few hundred years. I made a list of all of them I could find in English - 483 in total, the newest of which is 'pesterchum.' The abstract for my dissertation is up on my site, tankhughes.com. Anyway. I know too much about this topic. This list and the comments make me happy. :)

There's at least one French/English pair of surnames: Boileau = Drinkwater. Then there are the Rabelaisian names that get translated with the same structure: Baisecul = Kissebreech. Do-nothing is a translation of the old French fainéant kings.

sionnach, you're probably right, but I don't delete words from free-for-all lists because it makes me sad. call it a besetting sin.

chokestuff is one for Hoptoads, being something like "stuff that chokes", yes? foreign schmoreign; I think mollusque is more permeable than that

as for Dotheboys Hall, I think it should go in a big glorious Fictional Proper Nouns That Mean Stuff list (provisional name only), along with Prunesquallor and Sourdust and Stilton Cheesewright and Lord Monomark and John Beaver and all the other glorious markers of the English imagination

dotheboys, as in Dotheboys Hall is a near-miss for this list, I fear. Not sure about do-nothing, as in Truman's "do-nothing congress". The German word for nitrogen, Stickstoff, (chokestuff, or chokematerial) would be a nice addition, if foreign words were accepted. Actually, scratch that last one, as 'stuff' is not a direct object in the term.

does Spanish have a word for that structure? some language must; I warrant this is a compounding strategy that occurs elsewhere also - too intuitive not to.also - reasonably fun bilingual game! perhaps even really fun if one were fluent enough in both. gonna give 'er a crack: buscavida = seeklife; cuentagota = dropcount. in this way garden-variety compound nouns in Spanish could be refurbished into punchy new English ones?

Maybe not blowhole but blowcash works for the nonce! These nouns sound really punchy to me (hence the list), whereas the verb-creating compounds are too far integrated into the regular stream, IMHO. I'm picking my brain for a verb made from a compound like this that can match lickspittle--that'll motivate a new list.